Yodel not happy with retailers unrealistic delivery expectations

Yodel's boss - Dick Stead - is not happy with retailers who have been using them for deliveries. He wants to see them setting more realistic expectations for deliveries and that, if parcels are delivered late, then the retailer should take the blame, not the courier.

Of course, Royal Mail will be howling at this, as they've been complaining about companies muscling in on their turf, cherry picking the best delivery areas, when they don't have a universal obligation.

Yodel themselves have been getting it in the neck, especially on Mother's Day and Black Friday. Over Christmas, the company rejected the idea that late deliveries were their fault and had a big backlog after the crazy scenes on Black Friday.

Speaking to Retail Week, Dick Stead said: "You can’t ask parcel carriers to build up the capacity that’s only going to be used three times a year. Retailers haven’t quite grasped you can’t provide next day delivery at this rate, not this [Black Friday], next year or the year after."

"We’re working really hard with retailers at the moment to say ‘come on guys, there’s a certain limit of capacity next day delivery’. Reserve it for people who really need it the next day, and for everyone else for goodness sake you’ve had the bargain of a lifetime, but it might take 3-5 days to deliver."

"The difficulty is the people working in their supply chains understand it, but their marketeers don’t," he added.

6 comments

I would have some sympathy if they weren't utterly crap at delivering things in the 1st place .
If the lazy bastard staff could be bothered to climb 4 sets of stairs, instead of leaving the sorry you were out card sellotaped to the inside of a glass door for everyone to see. yup on the inside so they were in the bloody building.

Bit late to the discussion but this is still an ongoing problem and only Bitterwallet is following the story. It's quite funny that Yodel blames the retailers when in my experience Yodel are the ones setting and failing to meet expectations. They are incapable of delivering a parcel during the offpeak. I won't name the retailer because while Yodel has been blaming them (and forcing me to contact the retailer to resolve Yodel's mistake), this is not the retailer's fault. (Except that they need to stop using Yodel).
I ordered some goods from a retailer who uses DHL Global Mail and passes the parcels off to third parties in some countries, including Yodel in the UK. The retailer actually set me with the expectation that my purchase would take 13-18 to prepare and deliver (however that's for all customers worldwide so there's a little buffer for further destinations).
Imagine my surprise when my order shipped only 2 days after I placed it, but this turned into a nightmare when I discovered DHL had handed off the package to Yodel. Yodel received the parcel last Friday and at this point Yodel estimated delivery would be on Monday. At the end of day Monday, the estimate was changed to Tuesday. At the end of Tuesday, well they've stopped giving an estimate because they now seem unable to put their hands on the box and stop it from going in circles. I've been in contact with Yodel and while they claim to have escalated the problem, they can't tell me anything new while they're 'investigating why its been mis routed'. See instead of fixing their mistake, they're trying to find out how to blame the retailer. When I did contact the retailer at Yodel's request, they contacted Yodel and returned my phone call, informing me the problem would be fixed and I would receive the parcel likely today but if they caught it soon enough it might have come yesterday... that's another promise from Yodel. Now they refuse to give me any estimate while waiting for the investigation, plus Yodel suggested I contact the retailer again.